Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Science Fair!!

Henry's school science fair was tonight. It was quite the event! Henry had been thinking about a few different ideas and when he saw his Grandpa Bill several weeks back they sketched out a plan for a telegraph machine. Henry and Pete built it and here he is, showing off his work! Notice the blue ribbon! (I'll keep it to myself that everyone who participated got a blue ribbon. Henry was still very proud.)
He was stationed right next to a kid who was heating the air inside plastic bags with candles and letting the bag fly up in the air. That was cool, but a little distracting.
Here's Henry showing his project to the principal, Mr. Thome.
I thought he did a really nice job explaining how it works, and drawing the diagram.
Henry's class also did two class projects to show. This one was a model of a Mars rover. If you zoom in on the picture you can see Astronaut Henry.
They also did a class project where they balanced books on egg shells. Here's Henry's drawing of that project.
They were able to stack 4 dictionaries on top of 4 egg shells!
Here's Henry showing Mr. Toops (a science teacher at my school as well as Meadowbrook) how his telegraph machine works.
I took a picture of this project for Will.
It made for some pretty good reading.
You could also record the length of your own foot next to that of Bigfoot's.
Clara was very excited to be at the science fair. She had really wanted to make something to take herself. We've had to have lots of talks with both kids lately about how some things are special just for one or the other of them and they don't both need to do the exact same things all the time. I'm hoping that this 3rd child will help ease the competition between them a bit. Here's Clara playing with some cornstarch/water concoction. She may also have a little on her face.
She was all over the place- trying out every possible project. And you can see I wasn't the only camera-happy parent.
Clara's favorite thing (aside from her brother's) was this live bearded dragon. Her name was Texi and she was quite a lovely lizard. We got to pet her. Her owner was explaining to Clara about how he fed her different things to see what she liked the best...it was crickets.
And, finally, by the end of the night there was silliness and shenanigans. This is Henry with his pal Josh.
I was so proud of my boy tonight! His project was different from all the others and very nicely self-created. We're going to have a fun time thinking of something new and different for next year's science fair!

2 comments:

W.F. Decker said...

Tell Henry that he has a very proud grandfather as well. I'll have that boy doing electrical binary number systems some day, or maybe his dad can get him into making some kind of audio device! We'll spend some time thinking of ideas for Clara too. Lotsa love!!

Anonymous said...

How very cool. I remember growing plants under different colored cellophanes and through a maze to show how phototropism worked.

I also remember being really bent out of shape when my sister got to go to school and I had to stay home. It wasn't competitiveness so much as not wanting to be left out....and I was 4 years younger so I had a long wait for school. Kathie